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en-usEngadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronicsCopyright 2017 AOL Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/fitbit-ceo-says-its-first-smartwatch-will-be-ready-for-the-holid/https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/fitbit-ceo-says-its-first-smartwatch-will-be-ready-for-the-holid/https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/fitbit-ceo-says-its-first-smartwatch-will-be-ready-for-the-holid/#comments

Looks like Fitbit's new smartwatch will arrive before the holiday season, according to the company's CEO. In its second quarter earnings report, he noted that the wearable is "is on track for delivery ahead of the holiday season and will drive a strong second half of the year." Fitbit desperately needs a win and the device could give its revenue a big boost.

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businessearningsfitbitgadgetrygadgetsgearlosswearablesWed, 02 Aug 2017 17:41:00 -040021|23062117https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/27/lg-would-make-more-money-if-it-wasnt-for-smartphones/https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/27/lg-would-make-more-money-if-it-wasnt-for-smartphones/https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/27/lg-would-make-more-money-if-it-wasnt-for-smartphones/#comments
You know it's bad when your mobile business gets trounced by the rival that sold a smartphone that actually blew up in its customers pockets. That's the situation over at LG, whose mobile communications division contrived to lose $389.4 million across the last three months. In the company's latest financials, it's revealed that LG shipped 13.5 million devices and saw US sales increase by 14 percent quarter-on-quarter. But that's pretty much the same thing the company achieved in every quarter since the start of 2014, and that plan stopped making a profit partway through 2015.
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0businessfinancialsgearlglossmobileprofitq3q32016Thu, 27 Oct 2016 05:22:00 -040021|21592888https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/12/samsungs-note-7-crisis-will-cost-at-least-2-34-billion/https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/12/samsungs-note-7-crisis-will-cost-at-least-2-34-billion/https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/12/samsungs-note-7-crisis-will-cost-at-least-2-34-billion/#comments
Do you know what's really bad for your business? Selling a smartphone with a tendency to explode in your customer's pockets. That's why Samsung has revised its quarterly profit guidance, suggesting that it'll lose out on $2.34 billion in the current three-month period. That loss is all down to the Note 7 and its propensity for self-immolation that has so baffled the company's engineers.

HTC's Vive VR headset and HTC 10 smartphone sold briskly in Q2 2016, boosting revenue 27 percent over last quarter to 18.9 billion Taiwanese dollars ($598 million). The bad news is that compared to the same period last year, sales are down 42.7 percent -- not quite as bad as the 64 percent tumble last quarter, but still a precipitous drop. The company had an operating loss of 4.2 billion Taiwanese dollars ($133 million), making five straight quarters of futility.

LG is happy to announce that, thanks to its home appliance and entertainment divisions, it's made a record quarterly profit. But the company is less delighted to concede that its mobile division has suffered another weak quarter, ostensibly due to lukewarm sales of the LG G5. But LG's problems run a lot deeper than just an underwhelming flagship: It hasn't booked a profit since the second quarter of 2015. Even then, it was making a measly 1.2 cents in profit on every handset it sold, which wasn't much to brag about.

All is not well at HTC. It today posted another difficult earnings report detailing its fourth consecutive quarter of losses. The Taiwanese manufacturer, which has just released its latest flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, lost roughly $148 million between January 1st and March 31st. More worrying still is the drop in revenues when compared to 2015: HTC brought in 41.5 billion Taiwanese dollars this time last year (and broke even), versus 14.8 billion this year. That's a 64-percent drop in revenues.

After inventing a diesel engine that doesn't emit any harmful gases into the atmosphere, you'd think that VW would never run out of money ever again. Despite this, the German auto maker has just posted a quarterly loss of €3.48 billion ($3.84 billion) which, if we're honest, makes very little sense. After all, the financial documents reveal that the firm was making a pile of money up until September, and then everything drops off a cliff. The only thing that makes sense is if something totally implausible took place, like discovering that the firm was using software in a global system of emissionsfraud. But, if we're honest, nobody in their right mind would attempt something so irresponsible as that, would they.

In an extra-special Friday-night-before-a-holiday-weekend news dump, AT&T just announced that its Q4 results will include about $10 billion in charges. That includes a $7.9 billion "related to actuarial gains and losses on pension and postemployment benefit plans", plus a $2.1 billion charge for abandoning some copper lines it says it doesn't need anymore. Of course, you're probably already well into whatever your weekend plans are, so you'll barely even notice this happened once you get back to work on Tuesday -- which is just how AT&T hoped it would go.

Yes, all of the PLEX was destroyed, all 84 pieces, which comes out to roughly 70 billion ISK on the open market. The bright side is that this might at least teach the lesson that this cargo is too valuable to cart around unguarded, by which we mean that you can check back in here a couple of months from now to see the same thing happen again to another player.

When we reviewed Amazon's Fire Phone, we said that you'd better off waiting for the sequel. That's good advice for you, but not ideal for the company, since it ate a $170 million loss and has $83 million worth of unsold devices piled high in warehouses. It's probably for that reason that the company has, once again, slashed the off-contract price of the handset down from $449 to $199. Technically, of course, since the device comes with a year's free Prime subscription (worth $99), you're only really paying $100, which you have to admit is pretty damn cheap. You're still probably better to wait for the follow-up, though.

Sony expects to post a 50 billion yen net loss (around $490 million) in the current fiscal year, making it five annual losses across the last six years. The projection is a significant improvement from the 128.4 billion yen loss ($1.26 billion) Sony posted today for the year ending March 31, 2014, but it still sees the Japanese company languishing in the red.

The projected loss is tied to Sony's ongoing restructuring, and the costs of that bleeding into this year. Despite recording 177.4 billion yen ($1.74 billion) in "impairment charges" last fiscal year, Sony expects approximately 135 billion yen ($1.32 billion) in remaining costs this year, with 80 billion yen of that ($783 million) related to losses from exiting the PC business back in February.

As far as the PlayStation division goes, the outlook is rosier for the newly segmented "Game and Network Services" (Sony used to report the results of the "Game" division on its own). Sales rose by nearly 40 percent in the last fiscal year thanks to the PS4, but launching a new console contributed to an operating loss of 18.8 billion yen ($184 million), as did the closure of several MMOs. However, Sony expects to turn that loss into a gain this year.

Now that T-Mobile has upped its game, Sprint is left as the only major US carrier still struggling with financial losses. That didn't get much better this quarter, as the company lost 364,000 pre-paid and 231,000 valuable postpaid customers. It says the losses were anticipated, and were largely due to widespread annoyance at disruptions to its service, caused by the ongoing overhaul of its network infrastructure. Whatever the reason, the end result was the same old story: It finished with a net loss of $151 million for the quarter. The good news, however, is that Sprint's losses seem to be getting smaller as time ticks on -- it actually lost four times as much money in the same period last year.

Sprint has just revealed its Q4 2013 earnings, and despite increasing its postpaid subscriber base to a record 53.9 million, it still managed a net loss of $1 billion -- nearly four times worse than last quarter. That continues the US carrier's recent losing streak, and is especially notable during a holiday period when AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all had gangbuster quarters. On the plus side, it managed to hit its LTE coverage goal of 200 million people, but that figure is still the lowest of all the major carriers. It also sold 5.6 million smartphones compared to 5 million last quarter, with 20.5 million sold for the year. That accounts for 95 percent of postpaid subscriber sales, which tops its main competitors. With few other financial bright spots, though, new owner Softbank might be wondering what it got itself into.

Dead is dead. I can't stand when comics endlessly bring back dead characters, I can't stand when shows bring back dead villains, and I can't stand when death is treated less like the final note and more like a brief inconvenience. If you want someone to come back from the dead, don't kill the character in the first place! Death needs to be permanent to have any impact.

So this week's article is all about ignoring that and bringing characters back from the dead anyhow because the only reason to have rules is to know when to occasionally break them.

Roleplaying deaths are already rare, of course. I can count how many characters I've actually killed on one hand, and that's stretching back to roleplaying in Final Fantasy XI (abortively). But sometimes you decide that you want someone alive after all. And when it's done carefully, you can actually make the revival interesting again because you're not doing it for shock value so much as making a point.
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advicecharacter-deathcontinuitydeathfeaturedlorelossmiscellaneousopinionroleplayroleplayersroleplayingrpstorystoryboardFri, 07 Feb 2014 09:00:00 -0500319|20821745https://www.engadget.com/2013/10/03/htc-q3-2013-earnings-first-loss-ever/https://www.engadget.com/2013/10/03/htc-q3-2013-earnings-first-loss-ever/https://www.engadget.com/2013/10/03/htc-q3-2013-earnings-first-loss-ever/#comments

BlackBerry has just reported a $935 million hit in Q2 due entirely to what it's calling a "Z10 Inventory Charge" -- in other words, a loss associated with creating a stock of flagship handsets that subsequently failed to sell. Echoing Microsoft's catastrophic write-down due to unsold Surface RT inventory, this single loss was enough to wipe out much of the company's quarterly revenue of $1.6 billion. When added to a further loss due to corporate restructuring, it resulted in a final GAAP loss for BlackBerry of $965 million. It's hard to gauge exactly how many of the newer BB 10 handsets (namely the Z10 and Q10) sold during the quarter, but BlackBerry admits that "most" of the 3.7 million units that reached end users were older BlackBerry 7 devices, so the figures can't be pretty. For his part, Thorsten Heins says he's "very disappointed" with the results, but he claims the company saw growth in enterprise server (BES 10) customers and he insists there's still a future in that side of the business -- a future that could soon belong to someone else.

It's really hard to get your hands on a Revenant Supercarrier in EVE Online. Darn near impossible, in fact. The ship is worth around 300 billion ISK, coming out to about $8,000 in real currency. The ship is so potent that up until last night, there were thought to be no more than three in the entire game. As of last night, there were two. One of the Revenants was destroyed in a battle between Habitual Euthanasia and Black Legion.

Habitual Euthanasia apparently responded to a call for help, fielding the carrier against Black Legion, leading to its destruction. Speculation about whether this was a trap to destroy something valuable or simply a lucky break for the opposing side is being flung around with no conclusive answers. The video recording the destruction is embedded after the cut, although it's zoomed out enough that you cannot enjoy a slow-motion replay of one of the rarest ships in EVE Online going up in flames like a cheap firecracker.

I've been reading a book called Scorecasting lately. It's basically an academic exercise in statistics and human behavioral analysis as it relates to the decisions made in both individual and team sports. One of the chapters touches on a theory called loss aversion, which is a psychological phenomenon first attributed to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The theory is generally understood to mean that humans fear potential losses much more than they enjoy actual gains, and thus they often act in statistically irrational fashion to avoid said losses.

We can also see principles of loss aversion at work in MMOs. In fact, I'd go so far as to posit that loss aversion is a large, if indirect, reason why many people play MMOs in the first place. It's also a major reason why sandboxes, virtual worlds, and games that feature some sort of tangible risk/reward mechanic have been in such dire straits since MMOs went mainstream. Follow me past the cut and see if you agree.
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casualcraftingculturedesignfeaturedgame mechanicsgame-mechanicshardcoreitem-decaylossloss-aversionloss-aversion-mmomechanicsmmo industrymmo-loss-aversionopinionpgcplayer-contentplayer-generated-contentsandboxsarsome assembly requiredsome-assembly-requiredsome-assembly-required-jef-reahardthemeparkFri, 05 Jul 2013 15:00:00 -0400319|20643335https://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/26/square-enix-president-wada-to-step-down-106m-restructuring-l/https://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/26/square-enix-president-wada-to-step-down-106m-restructuring-l/https://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/26/square-enix-president-wada-to-step-down-106m-restructuring-l/#comments

Yoichi Wada is leaving his post as Square Enix president and representative director, Square Enix announced this morning. Wada, who became the company's president and CEO in December 2000, is to be replaced by former company director and CFO Yosuke Matsuda. According to Square Enix's announcement, the change is "subject to a resolution" at the company's annual shareholders meeting in June, and a board of directors meeting held afterwards.

The news coincides with Square Enix announcing further major revisions to its fiscal year forecasts, which the company attributes to its decision to implement major restructuring in the wake of "the rapidly changing environment of the game businesses." Square Enix expects the changes, which it noted as affecting development policy, organizational structure, and business models, to incur a total "extraordinary" loss of ¥10 billion, or around $106 million.

However, Square Enix says the primary reason for the company's lower-than-expected results is the "sluggish" sales performance of its major games in western territories. When Square Enix announced its nine-month fiscal year net loss of just over ¥5 billion, the company said then it hadn't recovered the losses from earlier in the year because of "the increasingly difficult condition of the worldwide console game market."

Today's forecast revisions show a dramatic turnaround for the company's yearly financials. For the fiscal year ending March 31, Square Enix is projecting now a net loss of ¥13 billion, or around $138 million, compared to initial forecasts of a net profit of ¥3.5 billion, around $37 million. The previous fiscal year, Square Enix posted a net profit of just over ¥6 billion.

Update: GamesBeat is reporting Square Enix sold a number of its free-to-play games to privately funded start-up Sleepy Giant, with sources "familiar with the matter" saying four unannounced games were included in the deal. Neither party has announced the deal, with a Square Enix representative telling GamesBeat it doesn't "comment on any details for external development deals."
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financialsjapanlossrestructuringsquare-enixyoichi-wadayosuke-matsudaTue, 26 Mar 2013 07:00:00 -040011|20518077https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/04/ncsoft-offices-undergoing-realignment/https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/04/ncsoft-offices-undergoing-realignment/https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/04/ncsoft-offices-undergoing-realignment/#comments

The hits just keep on coming for NCsoft. In the wake of City of Heroes' closure, the publisher's Seattle offices are apparently undergoing "realignment." The company has denied that the Seattle office is closing but has noted that several positions in the office have been terminated as a result of recent events. No details were released regarding how many people have been let go or how this will affect titles under NCsoft's aegis.

NCsoft made a similar round of layoffs last year in October, with several offices hit with large staff reductions. This round comes in the wake of continued losses for the company, including a 12% reduction in revenue in 2011, major losses already posted from earlier in 2012, and a stock price that is currently half of what it was earlier in the year. Our best wishes go out to all those affected by these layoffs.
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careersindustryjob-terminationlayoffslossmiscellaneousmmo industrymmo-industryncsoftnews itemsofficesprofitsrealignmentstock-priceworkforce-reductionTue, 04 Dec 2012 18:00:00 -0500319|20394280https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/26/nintendo-wii-u-to-be-sold-at-a-loss/https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/26/nintendo-wii-u-to-be-sold-at-a-loss/https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/26/nintendo-wii-u-to-be-sold-at-a-loss/#comments

Mario's alma mater may be looking at its next big console to bolster its stumbling net income, but it won't be raising its bottom line on hardware alone: Nintendo says the Wii U is going to be sold at a loss. While this is par for the course for most game consoles, loss leader products are somewhat of a new trend for Nintendo, which only started selling hardware at a loss recently. On the upside, company CEO Satoru Iwata says the 3DS is back in the black, finally selling for a tidy (though unspecified) profit after dropping its price late lastyear. Nintendo expects business to pick up down the road, but says circumstances will keep it from attaining "Nintendo-like" profits in this fiscal year.

Sprint's latest financials show that while the network is slowly stemming the flow of cash from its veins, it's not quite there in terms of turning a profit. The country's third biggest carrier suffered a $767 million net loss and an operating loss of $231 million -- much less than the $629 million operating loss it had in Q2, but on-par with the $208 million lost in the same period last year. The business did manage to bring in total revenues of $8.8 billion, but had to take a hit on a $397 million write-down on costs related to Network Vision and the continued pain of the Nextel shutdown.

On the customer size, it added a further 900,000 users, sold 1.5 million iPhones and a further 1 million "LTE smartphones" in the quarter. Those with long memories will know that the company sold the same number of Apple handsets in the last two quarters, with around 40 percent going to new customers then as now. However, churn, the deadly enemy of all carriers, increased to 1.88 percent, up from 1.69 percent in Q2. The network did manage to coax 59 percent of former Nextel customers to stay tied up with Big Yellow, which may account for it selling nearly 1.2 million Direct Connect devices. While it's hardly a rosy estimation of Sprint's financial health, this report doesn't take into account Softbank's $20.1 billion buy-out or the regained controlling stake in Clearwire -- so we're expecting the next financial announcement to contain some more exciting news.

Update: During the conference call, Dan Hesse was asked about adopting a shared data plan to rival Verizon and AT&T, but unlike the last call, he was dismissive of the idea.

The Wii U will sell at a loss when it launches, Nintendo revealed today. In an investor briefing, Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata disclosed the console's price is "below cost," citing it as one of the reasons for the company's reduced annual net profit outlook announced yesterday. The 3DS, however, is now no longer selling at a loss, a turnaround Nintendo predicted earlier this year.

Iwata's statement reads:

"In addition to the yen's continuous appreciation, the Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo's profits early after the launch because rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider to be reasonable. In this first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system while we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost. Our loss has therefore widened during the second quarter in spite of bringing the Nintendo 3DS hardware back to profitability. Although we expect our financial performance to be revitalized, under these circumstances, unfortunately we cannot say that we will achieve "Nintendo-like" profits within this fiscal year."

Nintendo revealed yesterday a loss of approximately $351 million for the first half of its fiscal year, along with predicted annual net profits of $75.2 million, down from $251 million. However, Nintendo expects to sell 24 million units of Wii U software worldwide by the end of March 2013, on the back of the 5.5 million consoles the company predicts it'll shift in that time. Iwata also noted GameStop has taken 250,000 Wii U pre-orders in North America, as of last week.
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3dslossnintendoprofitssatoru-iwatawii-uThu, 25 Oct 2012 06:15:00 -040011|20360203https://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/24/nintendo-cuts-annual-profit-forecast-by-70-first-half-loss-of/https://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/24/nintendo-cuts-annual-profit-forecast-by-70-first-half-loss-of/https://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/24/nintendo-cuts-annual-profit-forecast-by-70-first-half-loss-of/#comments

Nintendo slashed its annual net profit outlook by 70 percent, following first-half losses of approximately $351 million, 40 percent greater than expected. Ahead of the Wii U launch, the Japanese company now expects net profits of ¥6 billion ($75.2 million) for the fiscal year ending March 31 2013, compared to initial forecasts of ¥20 billion ($251 million).

In those initial forecasts Nintendo predicted losses of ¥20 billion for the six-month period ending September 30, but today revealed a significantly greater figure of almost ¥28 billion ($351 million). The company cited weaker than expected overseas sales of 3DS hardware and software, along with increased yen appreciation.

Nintendo also revealed the 3DS shifted 5 million units across the six months, taking the console to over 22 million worldwide sales to date. The company now expects 17.5 million sales for the 3DS by the end of the fiscal year, down 1 million from initial projections.

Nintendo of course expects the Wii U to takes figures back into the black in six months time, with the company now predicting 5.5 million units sold worldwide by March 2013.
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3dsdsforecastjapanlossnintendoprofitswiiwii-uWed, 24 Oct 2012 08:00:00 -040011|20358906https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/17/a-mild-mannered-reporter-the-unseen-cost-of-closing-city-of-her/https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/17/a-mild-mannered-reporter-the-unseen-cost-of-closing-city-of-her/https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/17/a-mild-mannered-reporter-the-unseen-cost-of-closing-city-of-her/#comments

City of Heroes is leaving a lot of victims with its closure: the employees of an excellent and underrated development team, a group of players with a lot of passion and energy, and an entire world that deserves to keep going. But there are a lot of other costs along with all of those, things what we're losing out on that you might not have even considered at the time.

At least, not until some writer on the internet decided to call attention to all of those things. Guilty as charged.

Those of us who are adamant fans of the game have been lamenting the loss of the game that is. But one of the reasons I tied every single anniversary post with another post looking forward is that City of Heroes has always been a game that moves in both directions. It's a game where a lot of the fun is tied into what it will be. And while there are some directions I've been critical of, there's a lot about what's coming up that's never going to be realized.
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a mild-mannered reportera-mild-mannered-reportercity of heroescity-of-heroescity-of-villainscohcovcoxf2pfeaturedfree-to-playfreedomgame mechanicsi24issue-24lorelosslost-opportunitieslost-updateslost-worldsmild-mannered-reportermmo industryncsoftopinionparagonparagon-studiospatchessadsave-cohshutdownsuper-herosuperherosuperheroesupdatesWed, 17 Oct 2012 13:00:00 -0400319|20350872